“The Wading Fortune”

For my final project in my Methods of Inquiry(an odd pre-req Stamps students must take to graduate hahahahah.) class I had to create an “advocacy desktop companion”. A weird name? Yes. But, I did not question the title of my project but focused on what I wanted to advocate for and what my individual project would look like. Right away, I knew I wanted it to be on excessive consumerism and/or animal cruelty. I decided to do overfishing because I feel like this topic is not talked about enough or even at all.

When sketching ideas I came to many dead ends but then my friend recommended to look up “Fortune Teller Miracle Fish” to seek inspiration. I found out that these fortune tellers are small envelopes that contain red fish on the inside that will tell one their “fortune”. To find their fortune, an individual would place the fish on their palm and see it move around because of the static it has. Then you would match the movement to a fortune found on the back of the envelope. For an example, if I placed the fish on my palm and it curls up entirely it would mean I am “passionate” according to the chart. After learning about this awesome and ridiculous invention I decided to recreate this into an overfishing advocacy project.

Instead of just any red fish I decided to create three types of envelopes for three different species affected by overfishing: green sea turtle, bluefin tuna, and vaquita dolphin. I drew these species out and then created my designs on photoshop. After, I printed the designs out and folded the paper into envelopes, I then cut the shapes of each species out of red acetate to put inside them. In addition, I created description cards for each species about who they are, why overfishing affects them, what has been done to help, and where someone could find more information.

When completing this project I had to do minimal research but after just reading one article, I was sent down a hole of digging up dirt on this world wide crisis. I also came to the realization that to get someone’s attention about this issue, they needed to hear tragic numbers and I needed to share horrible stories in order for a variety of people to sympathize. After I finished my envelopes it made me question how I could spread awareness with not only a desktop companion(lol) but something even bigger. I have begun to watch many documentaries that advocate for an issue and I believe this would be an interesting project to be apart of and I hope to keep this idea in mind for the future. ANYWAYSSS… Below I will include some pictures of my project. Also y’all should go to WWF.com and find out more information about overfishing. All the information is very interesting and good to know.

P.S.

Dear people,

I have some news to share with you all. Our environment is in danger. Are you surprised?

Best,

:0